The present invention relates generally to the management of advertising media and, more particularly, to the management of the inventory and invoicing of advertising time on broadcast media.
In the advertising media industry, corporations and other businesses (“clients”) purchases broadcast advertising time or spots from media buying companies (“buyers”). More specifically, clients and buyers agree on a broadcast media buying plan on an annual basis. The buyer then negotiates deals on a quarterly basis with cable networks (“networks” or “vendors”) or other broadcasting vendors, such as over-the-air broadcast television and radio and satellite television and radio, to meet the requirements of the media buying plan. Buyers typically operate a media resource planning system, such as Donovan Data Systems (DDS) Netpak, to assist in managing media campaigns. Such a system processes billings to clients, posts their payments and processes invoices from broadcast vendors and payments to them.
The advertising media landscape is changing very rapidly including increases in cable television advertising investment by businesses. Cascading from this, advertising time inventory is being exchanged at higher frequencies and unit (of advertising time) volume is increasing. This is making it increasingly difficult for buyers to ensure that client advertising dollars are invested as intended. In addition, the paper-based flow of unit inventory tracking is driving up labor costs and the turn-around or cycle time for invoice processing by buyers as they attempt to resolve discrepancies between advertising time units purchased and the actual advertising time units provided by the networks.
To reduce the invoice cycle time, buyers need to reduce the number of discrepant invoices for clients. To reduce the number of discrepant invoices, and address other shortcomings of a paper-based invoice tracking system, buyers require a system and method that automates synchronization of unit inventory between the buyers' media resource planning systems and cable networks' systems. Such a system and method would act as a bridge between the buyers' media resource planning systems and the cable network systems so that the data relating to the inventory of advertising time available for cable networks stored on the computer systems is automatically synchronized on a daily basis. The present invention offers such a system and method.